ernational Relations and the Significance of Theory

by Charles Strohmer

A
. .to help us cope with everyday life, people can be terrified
by the word. But theres no need to be. And in the world of international relations, no one can be. For
the many others who just cant be bothered, the word probably just doesnt seem practical. It has
come to have populist connotations of a life lived by ivory tower intellectuals who never had to deal
with dirty diapers, flat tires, or flu shots for the kids. But even diapers, radials, and injections have
theories behind them.

We seem to have lost sight of something, which would not have been so had we lived in the theatrical culture of
ancient Greece, where their words for theater and theory meant very nearly the same thing.Theatron(our
theater) meant the seeing place, or the place for seeing or viewing the performing arts. (Similar meanings
are found in the Latin and French for theater.)Theoria(our theory) meant looking at, seeing, viewing,
which for us today has come to indicate speculation or contemplation as opposed to action. So theoreticians are
uninvolved. They live in their heads. They are lifes disinterested spectators. Or so we think.

Thats not how audiences streaming out of an Athenstheatron, having witnesses the drama of a tragedy or a
comedy, would have understoodtheoria. Certainly the word for them underlined the activity of the mind, in
contrast to their wordpraxis(practice), buttheoriaincluded the idea of having some practical aim in mind,
looking at a thing or an event with some practical purpose. We can begin to get a feel for this when we think of
the physical effort alone that went into preparing for and then performing a Greek comedy or tragedy.

That there is more to theory than just intellectual exercise hasnt completely slipped our minds today. The
theory behind the Apollo spacecraft helped put the first man on moon. A new medical theory may help doctors
cure The police have a theory that And this one, which political actors today still use, the theater of
war.

The influence of theories

There is a sense in which theories bring together ideas and action, and for international relations and foreign
policy decision making they include both conceptual and practical aspects. Theories help political leaders make
sense of the world and shape to their foreign policies. International reality, then, is to some large degree
created, shaped, sustained, guided, and reshaped by whatever conceptual model happens to be ascendent in the
White House, or Downing Street, or the tents of al Qaeda when foreign policy decisions are being made. At least
some adequate awareness of the most relied on background theories is therefore necessary for understanding
international relations and foreign policy decision making.

Each theoretical model catches and emphasizes important

Theories help political leaders
elements of international relations and, as Robert Jervis,
professor of international affairs at Columbia University, notes, make sense of the world and
the arguments among scholars is usually not to pit one model shape to their foreign policies.
against another but to discuss the relative importance of and
interrelationships among various different models. (Robert
Jervis, Realism in the Study of World Politics, in Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner, eds.,Exploration and
Contestation in the Study of World Politics, 1999, p. 332.)

That is the general approach I have taken in the series of articles on understanding international relations and
foreign policy that will appear on this site. These articles will outline the most influential theoretical models of
the past several decades in the West. I have begun this process with articles onpolitical realism and idealism,
and onneoconservatism. These articles, however, do not just talk about these threeismsin the abstract. They
includes contemporary examples that showwhya particular leader and his advisors chose one policy over others
that were on offer. It is as a preface to the following articles, which try to make accessible a complicated field,
that I thought it might be useful, here, to start with some basics about the world of theory itself and its
significance to international relations.